Iran Cuts Off Hamas Funding

1. Angered by Hamas’ support for Syrian rebels, Iran cut funding — approximately £15 million a month — to the terror group. Here’s the Daily Telegraph‘s (pun intended) money quote:

Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, described relations with Iran frankly as “bad” before adding: “Diplomatically, I have to use other words.”

Hezbollah’s banner of resistance against the Zionists also took a hit. Palestinians in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp burnt Hezbollah’s humanitarian aid. The Daily Star described the protest:

“We don’t want assistance soaked in the blood of the Syrian people,” read one of the signs.

2. Pass the popcorn: Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi urged Sunnis to join the Syrian rebels. Note his harsh rhetoric against Alawites and Hezbollah, which the NY Times picked up on — this ain’t your daddy’s Great Satan!

A prominent Sunni Muslim cleric influential in the Syrian uprising has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling on Muslims around the world to help Syrian rebels in the embattled town of Qusayr and labeling Hezbollah and Iran, which support the Syrian government, enemies of Islam “more infidel than Jews and Christians.”

3. In an interview with Al Arabiya, a prominent Arab editor had harsh words for the state of Arab journalism:

Adel al-Toraifi, the editor-in-chief of the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, slammed media standards in the Arab world, claiming that many journalists let their personal views get in the way of the story.

“Journalists in the Middle East are political activists. They are not true journalists,” said al-Toraifi.

“Whenever you open a discussion, instead of it becoming a fact-checking debate about journalism, it somehow disintegrates into a political exchange. [It’s] the extreme siding, or the extreme manipulation . . . either victimization of one group or demonization of another.”

Israel and the Palestinians

• The BDS movement is singing the blues after Alicia Keys refused to cancel her July 4 concert in Tel Aviv.

• A mass grave for Arabs killed during the 1948 War of Independence was discovered by workers doing renovations at a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa. AFP, which got the scoop, doesn’t talk about any massacres. Just the difficult facts of life during a war:

Jaffa fisherman Atar Zeinab, 80, says that as a teenager during the final months of fighting in 1948 he helped to collect the Arab dead in the area south of Jaffa and bring them for hasty burial in the cemetery, the area’s main graveyard.

“I carried to the cemetery 60 bodies during a period of three or four months,” he told AFP. “We used to find the people in the street and most of the time we didn’t know who they were.”

• Palestinian TV gave a birthday shout-out to Abbas Al-Sayyed, who masterminded the Passover massacre in Netanya. Good heads up from Memri.

•JCPA: The Al-Dura Affair and Its Implications for Morality and Ethics in France

• Germany supports labeling products made in settlements. Details at the Jerusalem Post.

Aloof (mil) Amos Yadlin got it wrong. True, once the Arak reactor goes critical there will be radio-active contamination when attacked and destroyed. But that is far , far smaller than in the Chernowil calamity. Then, tons of boiling uranium were released into the air. By comparison, the Arak reactor is in the order of 100 MW or less, whereas the Ukranian reaktor was in the order of 1000 mega watts.
Israeli warplanes destroyed the Iraqi Osirak-reactor in 1981, just before it was charged with fissible elements and thus before it became critical.
Irrespecrive of Yadlin’s exaggeration, Israel should keep a watchfull eye on Iran’s PLUTONIUM programme, not just at the spinning centrifuges.

What makes you think that the Russian threat to sell MiGs to Syria is a negative for Israel? Over the last 25 years, MiGs have proven to be some of the least reliable combat aircraft in the world. They tend to fall out of the sky. Couple that with Syrian pilot lack of flight hours, and I would say that you have a favorable turn for Israel (and Russia, which is trying to keep MiG on life support).